eli_sennesh comments on Integral vs differential ethics, continued - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (18)
My own resolution to the "repugnant conclusion" is that the goodness of a population isn't a state function: you can't know if a population is better than another simply by looking at the well-being of each currently existing person right now. Instead, you have to know the history of the population as well as its current state.
Well when you're dealing with real people, their memories in the present time record all kinds of past events, or at least information about such, so any coherent, real-life state-function for values of people must either take past events into true account (which sounds like the right thing), or take memories into account (which sounds like a very, very hacky and bad idea).